Former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s Sex Crime Conviction Overturned By New York court

On Thursday, New York’s highest court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, stating that the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” inappropriate rulings, including allowing women to testify about charges that were not part of the case.

“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the court’s 4-3 decision stated. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”

The state Court of Appeals decision reopens a sad chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by prominent figures, which began in 2017 with a wave of complaints against Weinstein. On the witness stand, his accusers could be made to relive their traumas again.

“It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behaviour that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them,” the court’s majority stated.

The majority was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative,” Judge Madeline Singas stated in a stinging dissent and the Court of Appeals was carrying out a  “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”